Print journalists are bemoaning the death of the newspaper is just like Kodak complaining about the digital camera. You saw it coming and you didn’t move. Your problem.

They’re also bemoaning the loss of authority much more than the loss of jobs. It’s going to take a while, but eventually it will be as prestigious to say that “I write for the [insert name of highly lucrative, professionally written and edited blog here]” as it once was to say “I write for the New York Times.” It’s going to take a while, but a new business model will emerge where sites with good, authoritative, fact-checked content (or vehemently user vetted content) will become the new “mass” media.

The really great part of all this (I hope) is that the content will be controlled by the many, not the few. The ‘long tail’ aspect of consumption on the internet will allow stories that get killed in traditional print or broadcast media to survive online. The nature of the internet itself will allow the stories to be fact-checked, vetted, discussed by interested parties much more thoroughly than is being done in traditional media. A more democratized media is good for all concerned and democratized doesn’t have to mean ‘amateur’. And just because ‘amateur’ means unpaid, it doesn’t necessarily mean ignorant.